Interview with Kim Ogg

Let’s talk about the Harris County District Attorney’s race for a minute, shall we? We all remember what happened in 2012, when perennial candidate/yahoo Lloyd Oliver won the Democratic primary for DA because he had some name ID for having run for things before and because presumed candidate Zack Fertitta did not adequately connect with enough voters to overcome that. Oliver was exactly the candidate in the general election that we knew he would be, and as a result Mike Anderson won easily. The office of DA is on the ballot again this year due to the tragic and untimely death of Mike Anderson, and once again Democrats have a choice in their primary between a highly respected and well-qualified candidate, and Lloyd Oliver. That highly respected and well-qualified candidate is Kim Ogg. Ogg is a former prosecutor, she has been the head of Crime Stoppers and the city of Houston’s anti-gang task force, and she has a long history in politics as the daughter of former State Sen. Jack Ogg. She’s also been saying smart things since announcing her candidacy about reinstating the trace case policy and ensuring the DA isn’t needlessly contributing to jail overcrowding. We talked about those things and a lot more in the interview.

Please, please, let’s make sure we don’t suffer the same fate as in 2012. Tell everyone you know to make sure they vote for Kim Ogg in the primary. No knock on Devon Anderson, who is a well-qualified DA herself, but we deserve a real choice this November. Kim Ogg gives us that choice, Lloyd Oliver does not.

You can see all of my interviews as well as finance reports and other information on candidates on my 2014 Election page.

2 Comments

i keep going over the same issue with kim ogg kuffner and since you keep retreading the issue=here goes=when kim ogg was a prosecutor in 1991=she prosecuted wilton earl bethany in the 184th district court=he was a first time felony offender=he had also turned age 17 years old just 7 to 8 days before his crimes=when she tried the case=to judge burdette,not a jury trial=she used a witness that perjuried themselves under a sworn affivadit=this was her most important witness because he was blaming bethany=the witness that sold the shot gun only identified kim oggs perjuried witnessed as the person he sold the gun to,her witness admitted on the stand that he had lied on his sworn affividavit(might have been a good time for kim ogg to offer a better plea bargain at that time,she didnt) what even makes the case worse is kim ogg gave her perjuried witness full immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony,while wilton bethany tdcj # 631360 got life in prison.

kim ogg is not balanced in fairness to be da of harris county.
in the year of our lord 2014 joshua ben bullard

I’m getting the impression that Ogg’s primary strength as a candidate for some is that she’s running as a democrat. She spent her obligatory 6+ years in the DA’s office after law school, her record modest as a prosecutor, before being appointed to head the city’s anti-gang task force courtesy of her father’s political ties. No one asked can come up with a single thing she did in this role at the city other than collect a paycheck, no policy changes or other actions tied to her that made a difference. She then bailed to work as the head of Crime Stoppers, continuing the same policies that had been established before her reign and little changing afterwards as well. Over the years since school in the late 80’s, she has run for political office repeatedly and lost every single time; each of her jobs after the DA’s office best suited as having limited actual duties to allow her to run for elected offices.

I’ve met her a number of times over the years and she seems like a nice woman but the more I listened to her interview, the more I thought she was out of her league. Street level cops directed to leave alone end drug users in favor of targeting cartels and high level criminal activity, aside from the fact that the DA doesn’t direct ANY local law enforcement agencies or their policies, is a fantasy straight out of Hollywood. Blanket policies like trace cases (either accepting all of them or none of them) is a cop out, by all means change state law if you don’t like it but use the tools the legislature supplies you as needed.

All of her discussion regarding shifting arrests again raises the issue that the DA does not control law enforcement priorities (the cities and county do that), she does this repeatedly during her interview. Her discussion about integrity and trust is problematic thanks to some of the cases she prosecuted (Joshua raises one such case), just as the way she claims she was a prosecutor before DNA testing was available is half true; she was there at the advent of local DNA testing when establishing better priorities and forcing agencies to test if a case needed it could have been accomplished (rather than allow the city to build up thousands of untested rape kits, for example). That she also claims, toward the end of the interview, that she should get our votes because she has been a public servant almost her entire adult life was a bit weird too, understandable at this juncture primarily because she needs to beat Lloyd before trying a real candidate with superior credentials.